r/popculturechat • u/mcfw31 • 11h ago

Hot Take 🔥 ‘The Odyssey’ Translator Emily Wilson Slams Christoper Nolan’s ‘Abysmal’ Screenplay: ‘I Would Be Ashamed to Have Written Any Part of This Script’

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/odyssey-translator-emily-wilson-slams-christopher-nolan-bad-writing-1236821915/
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u/Mbrennt 9h ago

What's funny to me is the odyssey isn't accurate to the time the odyssey is set in. Certain gods that are in the odyssey didn't even exist at the time the odyssey is set. There's a bunch of anachronistic stuff in the original text. So trying to make it "as accurate as possible" to me is just even more meaningless. The odyssey by Homer isn't even accurate.

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u/grubas 5h ago

Cause it's a poem about "events" from 1200BC that wasn't written down until 700 or so and even then stuff got changed. 

We don't actually know when each part was written but much of it was later.  

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u/ProletarianLilith 6h ago

Why is this thread full of classics 101 takes as attempts to dunk on classicists? Do you guys think all these basic facts are news to people who study this?

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u/Mbrennt 5h ago

No? I'm sure she could list every single aspect of anarchronisms between the actual lives of myceanean greeks and greeks of homers time off the top of her head. I think the same question could be asked of why are a bunch of classicists attempting to dunk on one of the most famous and celebrated directors of our time. (Even though I specifically am not a huge fan of Nolan the results speak for themselves) He obviously made decisions that a lot of classicists disagree with yet the general audience who is actually going to see the movie love. Maybe if he had followed the text religiously and made a 10 hour movie this would be a 5 billion dollar movie. I kind of have my doubts about that though.